page_title: History of democracy
section_title: Waves of democracy in the 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of democracy / Rise of democracy in modern national governments / Waves of democracy in the 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Waves of democracy. Based on File:Number of nations 1800-2003 scoring 8 or higher on Polity IV scale.png
context_page_description: A democracy is a political system, or a system of decision-making within an institution or organization or a country, in which all members have an equal share of power. Modern democracies are characterized by two capabilities that differentiate them fundamentally from earlier forms of government: the capacity to intervene in their own societies and the recognition of their sovereignty by an international legalistic framework of similarly sovereign states. Democratic government is commonly juxtaposed with oligarchic and monarchic systems, which are ruled by a minority and a sole monarch respectively.
  Democracy is generally associated with the efforts of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who were themselves considered the founders of Western civilization by the 18th century intellectuals who attempted to leverage these early democratic experiments into a new template for post-monarchical political organization.
context_section_description: The end of the First World War was a temporary victory for democracy in Europe, as it was preserved in France and temporarily extended to Germany. Already in 1906 full modern democratic rights, universal suffrage for all citizens was implemented constitutionally in Finland as well as a proportional representation, open list system. Likewise, the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 inaugurated a few months of liberal democracy under Alexander Kerensky until Lenin took over in October. The terrible economic impact of the Great Depression hurt democratic forces in many countries. The 1930s became a decade of dictators in Europe and Latin America.
  In 1918 the United Kingdom granted the women over 30 who met a property qualification the right to vote, a second one was later passed in 1928 granting women and men equal rights. On August 18, 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution was adopted which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. French women got the right to vote in 1944, but did not actually cast their ballot for the first time until April 29, 1945.
  The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted full U.S. citizenship to America's indigenous peoples, called "Indians" in this Act. (The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to persons born in the U.S., but only if "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"; this latter clause excludes certain indigenous peoples.) The act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on 2 June 1924.  The act further enfranchised the rights of peoples resident within the boundaries of the United States.
caption: The three 20th century waves of democracy, based on the number of nations 1800–2003 scoring 8 or higher on Polity IV scale, another widely used measure of democracy.
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